


On Psi Corps Arranged Marriages (Part 2)

by pallasite



Series: Behind the Gloves [111]
Category: Babylon 5, Babylon 5 & Related Fandoms
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Backstory, Canon Compliant, Episode: s02e08 Soul Mates, Essays, Fix-It, Gen, How canon misled you, Psi Corps, Telepath culture, Worldbuilding, telepaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 07:12:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14539404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallasite/pseuds/pallasite
Summary: The second part of a comprehensive essay on marriage in the Corps.The prologue ofBehind the Glovesishere- please read!





	On Psi Corps Arranged Marriages (Part 2)

**Author's Note:**

> What is this series? Where are the acknowledgements, table of contents and universe timelines? See [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10184558/chapters/22620590).
> 
> If you like _Behind the Gloves_ and would like to send me an email, I can be reached at counterintuitive at protonmail dot com. Do you have questions? Would you like to tell me what you like about this project? Email me!
> 
> I also have an [ask blog](https://behind-the-gloves.tumblr.com/), a [writing blog](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/pallasite-writes), and a "P3 life" Tumblr [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/p3-life) with funny anecdotes. :)

Part 1 is [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14408412). Summary of Part 1: Arranged marriages in the Corps are not what you think, are not as common as you think, always involve consenting adults, and no one is _forced_ to marry or breed.

\-----

Now, with that established, what's this genetic matching business, anyway?

I will get into this in more detail later (and actually already have, in [Natasha Alexander's story](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11991930/chapters/27130080)) but I'm going to back up.

Putting aside the allegations in _A Race Through Dark Places_ (because those allegations deserve their own detailed response), canon's not lying to you when it says that the Corps sometimes suggests marriage (or having a baby artificially) to telepaths who are deemed to be close genetic matches.

What they never tell you is _why._

There are many canon errors about the Corps in Peter David's episode _Soul Mates_. As I said at the bottom of [this post](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10553654) about Department Sigma, Peter David, though an author I greatly love, missed the mark with this episode and made up some stuff that is totally inconsistent with the rest of canon. As I heard the story (in part from him), the episode went through many rewrites, with JMS tossing it back in his face each time, and it almost wasn't approved by JMS (primarily for structural reasons) till Harlan Ellison got involved and Peter David finally brought the structure more in line. I take the position in  _Behind the Gloves_ that on some key issues, especially relating to the Corps, Peter David just didn't have a deep understanding the world in which he was writing.

Nonetheless, this is one of the few times marriage in the Corps is discussed in canon, so let's look at that snippet.

Talia: "In your first year of training in Psi Corps Academy you're assigned to an advanced trainee who oversees your development."

[The Academy is actually high school, though he seems to mean a college-age program. That, for Talia, would be her training as a commercial or court telepath (she has both). There's no other reference in canon to such pairing up in that age group or in these kinds of programs, but maybe there was in Talia's particular program, I don't know.]

Talia: "Matt was mine. He was charming, sympathetic. Understand, the things I learned to do for Psi Corps were, and are, difficult."

[There is no explanation of what these things were, or why they were difficult. She was training to be a commercial telepath, which isn't especially challenging a job - you mostly sit there as a potted plant and die of boredom as normals conduct their business around you. She wasn't training to be a Psi Cop or bloodhound - she's just a P5. The only difficult thing Talia's mentioned being involved with was doing before and after scans on prisoners sentenced to death of personality... and that wouldn't be first year training, I don't think!]

Talia: "Matt made the transition easier, at first. Then the Corps decided that we were genetically compatible. The odds of us producing a child of great telepathic abilities were substantial. It all happened so fast."

Ivanova, I think: "How long were you married?"

Talia: "Just long enough to realize it was a mistake."

\-----

OK, so they were close - they worked closely together and they were friends. Sometimes one person puts in the request and asks the Corps for a compatibility check (as Bester did with his first finacee, before proposing to her), and sometimes the Corps (here, via the teachers at the school) goes, "Hey! These two young people seem to like each other, and the odds of them having a child who is telepathically stronger are pretty good, so let's suggest marriage to them." It's a _suggestion_. People can say no. And if they marry and it was a mistake, they can separate, divorce or get an annulment like anyone else can.

But the show never answers the crucial question - **_why does the Corps care about genetic compatibility, anyway?_**

By leaving this out of the show as a whole, canon is deceiving you. They want you to think this must be some nefarious eugenics plot to breed a master race (and take over the world!). Or maybe that the Corps is being fascist, abusive and infantilizing of telepaths FOR LOLZ. They want you to think they look at their own people like some kind of breeding stock, like telepaths all live in a giant Telepath Puppy Mill. (TM.)

What's actually going on is entirely different, even if most telepaths don't know the history and the reasons - Kevin Vacit, once the director of the Corps, had received messages from Vorlons. He knew the Shadows were one day going to come and try to take over the world (and kill everyone). He knew that telepaths were necessary to stop this threat. _And he knew that there were far fewer telepaths alive than should have been, because of a long history of normals massacring, one-on-one murdering, and aborting telepaths._

Too few telepaths + telepaths aren't strong enough + Shadows = everyone's dead. Including that 99.9% non-telepath population.

Not all telepaths carry the genetic marker for telepathy, because it's more complicated than that, but whatever the causes, it's recessive. Beyond that, I don't know the genetics, but Vacit helped created a bureaucratic system whereby telepaths who are not likely to produce children of equal or greater telepathic strength may be _prohibited_ from marrying, and telepaths who are likely to produce children of equal or greater strength would be permitted to marry if they request it, and to whom marriage (or IVF without marriage) may be _suggested_ , if they are amenable to it. (Here, Talia and Matt were already friends.)

This is not a puppy mill. The relevant comments in Jenny's diary are [the rantings of a brainwashed thirteen-year-old girl](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10867419) who has never lived a minute in the Corps or even met someone in the Corps. (I'm a little shocked that fandom takes her and the Dexters as reliable sources of information here!)

Back to the show itself, and _Soul Mates_ , Talia wouldn't know this backstory about the Shadow threat - she would just know that this is how her people do things, and have done things for generations (at least a hundred years). Most telepaths would just see it as part of tradition, a way to keep their people strong and make them stronger. Some (especially laters) might resent it. OK. But you all do realize that some form of arranged marriage has been the norm in human history since time immemorial, right? That marriages _not_ being suggested or arranged by one's family is the aberration, right?

Yes, some laters resent it. It's not their culture. But the viewers need to know what's going on - what happens and what doesn't happen - and the reasons for it.

Big picture? To help protect Earth from future Shadow invasion.

Small picture? Tradition. Culture. An insular, tight-knit community. Keeping our family healthy and strong.


End file.
